Evangelism and Discipleship, Etc.

Friday, March 9, 2018

Since so much happens in these three chapters (16-18) and the assignment is to write a one page reflection, I can't possibly address every interesting point in this section of Acts. I will therefore break from my usual type of reflection and instead reflect on the effect I feel this section has on me at a more personal level.

As I have shared in an early reflection on a section of Acts, I have continually been attempting since I became Catholic to discern how God wants to use me and the experiences I had as a non-Catholic evangelical Christian in the New Evangelization. I have found myself often in dispair because I begin to allow myself to suspect God does not like me, God does not trust me, or God has disqualified me due to my weaknesses.

I am not sure the events in chapters 16 through 18 give me unshakeable confidence God has any degree of confidence in me but these chapters have shown me a few principles upon which I can rely. I have picked up on some patterns of how God got people involved in evangelization in the middle of the first century, so I should be more able to relax and not worry I have missed or may miss my queue on where God wants me to step in.

The evangelizers in Acts are either sent by a community, or, if an evangelizer sets out on his or her own, the community relatively quickly gets wind and checks him or her out. In some cases, like with Apollos, there are some minor adjustments, given assistance from a commnity, and sent back out to have effective evangelical ministry. In those other cases, like the magicians and pagan prophets, we don't know what happened to them after they got slapped down. I take from this if God doesn't use a community to send me and I go out on my own, I should not be surprised or offended if a community reigns me in for adjustment.

I picked up on another pattern, especially in chapters 16 through 18 of Acts. Both established believers (Priscilla and Aquilla) and new converts (Lydia) affirmed Paul and Silas in their evangelistic endeavors. There also was opposition but it came from jealous groups who saw their market-share being cut into by the successes of the evangelizers. In a similar way, if I'm correctly discerning God's call, I should expect both support and opposition.

I have not found in Acts so far examples of how to deal with opposition from wihin the believing community and/or mixed messages from commmunity leadership. How would Paul, Silas, and Timothy have handled a situation where a believing community did not accept them even though they had the support of the leadership in Jerusalem, and the support of so many other believing communities? How would they have handled it if a community did not sanction their methods.

In our modern Roman Catholic Church I have witnessed examples of this lack of community and leadership support. I have also witnessed examples of communities or leaders disapproving these very methods used by the early evangelists. I have seen parish leaders de-emphasize evangelization and disciple making in order to maintain practices and programs which are not now and have never been partcularly effective. The early evangelists spoke on street corners and public arenas, in places of prayer and worship of other religions. Many Catholics have not been supportive, to put it mildly, of attempts to bring these methods of public evangelization back into public space.

Thursday, March 8, 2018

The
Acts of the Apostles chapter eleven reminds me of a two part episode in a TV
series. At the beginning of the second part of the episode we get a quick reminder
of what happened in part one. Luke wrote again both the two parallel subplots
we remember from the first part of this episode as coming from the mouth of
Peter, explaining to the other Apostles and other leaders in Jerusalem. First Luke
wrote of Peter relating the story of how he, Peter, was directed to proceed to
lay aside his Jewish traditions of non-association with Gentiles.Next Luke wrote about how Peter related the
story he had heard from Cornelius and about the Holy Spirit had been given to
Cornelius, his relatives, and close friends. I find it interesting Peter didn’t
play the “I’m the first Pope” card but deferred to the Apostles. This is how
the Church works. The Pope is a servant bishop among bishops and does
everything in union with all the other bishops.

“God
has granted life-giving repentance to the Gentiles too.” A person could take a
while to examine this statement. I find it interesting God grants repentance. I
take it to imply repentance does not start with the penitent sinner. I also see
this reference to repentance as life-giving. I would have expected this to say
“God has granted life-giving grace to the Gentiles too.” I may be still
exposing some left-over non-Catholic thinking I have carried over from my
pre-Catholic background.

Luke in chapter eleven verses 19 through
26 stepped back to tell of other events and circumstances that lead to another
proclamation of Jesus to Gentiles. Greeks were spoken to about Jesus through a
two-step process because the Jews scattered after the stoning of Stephen had
proclaimed Jesus to Greek-speaking Jews from Cyprus and Cyrene. These
Greek-speaking Jews in turn proclaimed Jesus to Greek-speaking Greeks who were
in no way Jews.

Since the folks in Jerusalem wanted
to send someone to Antioch to check out these new, Greek believers who were
evangelized by Greek-speaking Jews from Cyprus, they thought of Barnabas, who
we last met way back at the end of chapter four. He also was also a Jew from
Cyprus, who, I speculate, spoke Greek. Barnabas did some great evangelizing in
Antioch “And a large number of people were added to the Lord.” He went to
Tarsus to fetch Paul and the two spent a year there teaching that “large number
of people.” We have Antioch to thank for passing down to us the moniker of
Christians, since the designation was first used there.

I wondered about the famine Agabus,
the prophet from Jerusalem, predicted when he went to Antioch with some other
prophets. He said it would severe famine over all the world (happened under Claudius).
If it covered the whole world, why did the brothers in Judea need relief any
more than anyone else? Whatever the reason, Paul and Barnabas were sent to
Judea with the “care packages”.

Herod ordered James executed and had
Peter thrown in prison. An angel got Peter out of the prison, which lead Herod
to order the guards’ execution. It has been said it was easier for Peter to get
out of the prison than it was for him to get into the prayer meeting.

Somewhere
in Judea Barnabas and Saul picked up John, called Mark (too many Johns to keep
track of?) and they all went back to Jerusalem.

We
begin to get a more serious Mediterranean geography lessons in chapter
thirteen. Somehow, between the end of chapter 12 and the beginning of chapter
13, Barnabas and Saul went from Jerusalem back to Antioch to be commissioned by
the Holy Spirit “for the work to which I have called them.”

I
wish I could have been with Saul, whose Jewish name is soon changed to Latin
Paul, especially on this trip, because I like to sail. It seems like he didn’t
experience any shipwrecks on this trip so the sailing would have been
enjoyable. I would gladly have filled in for John, called Mark, who didn’t last
long. He bailed at Perga. Of course I know there was also quite a hike from Perga
to the other Antioch and beyond, no sailing there. But there was eventually a
sail boat ride back to Seleucia. Paul’s third trip involved a lot more sailing,
but it also involved a shipwreck, a cold winter and a snake bite. I don’t think
the third trip, even though there was more sailing, would have been an
enjoyable sail.

I am a student of the Celts,
especially the early Christian Celtic Saints (St. Patrick, St. Columba, St.
Aidan, St. Hilda, etc.). I find it interesting the region called Galatia got
its name because it was inhabited by emigrants from Celtic Gaul.Paul evangelized southern Galatia, so there
were Christian Celts here a while before there were Christian Celts in Spain
and France (Gaul).

I
found two amazing things in the tenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles.
First is the great job of evangelizing done by Peter and Cornelius. Second,
nowhere in Peter’s speech is the divinity of Christ claimed.

First, I expected Peter to have evangelized
Cornelius. Peter was the Chief of the Apostles, of course he was going to
evangelize. First he had to “get” the message from God all people are declared
“clean”. This was accomplished by the vision he had of all those clean and
unclean animals being let down from heaven three times on something like a sheet
being held by four corners. I found amazing the great job Cornelius did of
evangelizing his household, his relatives, and his close friends. What a great
example! First he called two of his servants and a devote soldier to go fetch
Peter. But he doesn’t just say, “Go get this guy named Peter over in Joppa at
Simon the Tanner’s house”. Cornelius “told them everything.” I take this to
mean he told the servants and the soldier about the vision, being seized with
fear, and about the angel. This has got to be a faith building testimony for
the four men. He is evangelizing even before he knows what exactly this Simon
called Peter character is going to be telling him.

God could have been far less
dramatic. He could have just told Cornelius right out in the vision about Jesus
and skipped the whole fetching Peter part.God could have given Peter a vision of “Hey, look here, you! I’ve
started revealing the Gospel to the Gentiles. Get with the program. I declare
them clean. Don’t argue.” Done.But God
doesn’t want to do it alone; He wants his people to get a piece of the action.
He got Cornelius involved and Cornelius set a great example of how to
evangelize. First he lead a godly life. Unfortunately many Catholics think this
is as effective as they can be and they stop there. But not Cornelius! God
tells Cornelius he’s got a message for him which will be delivered by this
Simon called Peter character. So what does Cornelius do? He makes sure before
Peter ever gets to his home he has gathered his relatives and close friends for
the evangelistic, Holy Spirit revival they were about to have, which Cornelius
probably didn’t even suspect. An evangelist is coming and Cornelius gathers an
audience for the evangelist. This sounds like how a city gets ready for a Billy
Graham Crusade.

Peter arrives, is welcomed, and is
so coy as to ask why Cornelius summoned him. Peter already knows. The Spirit
had told him there were three men he should accompany. The three men explained
about Cornelius and told Peter an angel had told Cornelius to invite Peter to
his house “to hear what you have to say.”

Second, I found it interesting
nowhere in Peter’s speech to does Peter say point blank Jesus is God. Nowhere
does Peter try to explain the Trinity. Peter said Jesus is “Lord of all” (vs.
36), God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with Power, and
Jesus went about doing good and healing. Peter declares this “man” God raised
on the third day and granted that he be visible to the witnesses chosen by Him.
Peter then testified Jesus was appointed by God as judge of the living and the
dead, and to him all the prophets bear witness in Jesus’s name the sins of
believers will be forgiven. Peter, however, does not at this time claim Jesus
is God, the second person of the Trinity. No help here for those times when I
disagree with people who do not believe in the Trinity and/or people who do not
believe Jesus was divine from eternity. Thanks Peter!

Peter and the brothers who were with
him from Joppa were all Jews and used to having set patterns from God, written by
his finger in stone on Mount Sinai. Surprise! Once again God breaks the
pattern. These folks all receive the Holy Spirit and speak in tongues before even
being baptized in the name of anyone. They didn’t even need to recite a
“sinner’s prayer” or go to confession, or anything, just instant Pentecostal
worship.

Cornelius’s crowd asked Peter and
company to stay a few days. God had a hand in it. He had to allow time for the
grapevine to go to work so the disciples back in Jerusalem could stew for a
while about the whole new “Gentiles Thing.” And 99.9% of the people in Joppa, Caesarea,
and Jerusalem had no idea how big a revolution had started brewing in those few
days starting with a Jew and a Centurion. All of history would be affected
because a couple men had a couple visions.

The
commentary in this section starts off early on using one of my favorite words,
evangelize. I came from an evangelical background. Billy Graham, the evangelist,
was (and still is) a hero of mine, even though a Catholic acquaintance of mine
had a conversation with him and he strongly argued Catholics are wrong. Since I
became Catholic my radar has scanned continuously for any derivation of the
word “evangelize” (evangelization, evangelical, evangelist). I am so excited
about the New Evangelization.

I found it interesting Peter told
Simon to “pray to the Lord that, if possible, your intention may be forgiven.”
Peter seems to indicate it isn’t a simple thing to gain forgiveness from God. So
often we hear people claim God will forgive any sin if we repent, but this
example seems to indicate maybe it’s not all that easy. This could be used as
an example of the authority of the Apostles and the strength of the Saints’
intercession as Simon asks Peter to intercede for him, “Pray for me to the
Lord…”

I took a new look at all these
examples where there were baptisms in the name of Jesus, and baptisms where the
Holy Spirit was conferred, and other baptisms where the expected formula was
not used. It seems to me this may be a lesson to help us avoid a common
practice. So often someone has a spiritual experience in a certain way and this
someone will make it a personal mission to share to everyone they should experience
the same thing in the same way. The variety of ways the Apostles brought people
into the family seems to indicate that “one size does not fit all.” We should
not think our spiritual experience is the mold for everyone else’s experience.

I thought it was rather funny the
commentary should refer to the new believers as “Jews for Jesus.” For many
years I was a supporter of the organization “Jews for Jesus.” I received their
newsletters with statements from their leaders and founders, such as Moshe Rosen.
When I was sent on business to New York City I hiked alone to visit two
landmarks close to the Empire State Building, Marble Collegiate Church and the
Jews for Jesus Headquarters. Dr. Norman Vincent Peale
(author of the Power of Positive Thinking)was not at the Marble
Collegiate Church that day (I had the same luck at the Crystal Cathedral when I
visited; Robert Schuller wasn’t there that day either.) however , there were
plenty of people around at the Jews for Jesus Headquarters. How very Jewish it
was to me that a nice Jewish lady insisted I try some goats milk. Many years
later our older daughter’s first harp teacher was a typical Jewish mother,
telling our daughter to go home and eat lots of chicken soup to cure her cold.

The experiences of Saul going from a
bounty hunter of those who are professing Jesus as risen from the dead to a
courageous preacher of Jesus as the Son of God would make a great suspenseful
movie. It seems this passage goes too fast, as twice Saul is smuggled away from
those who are plotting to kill him. We know these must have been very
suspenseful experiences but Luke marches through at a pace just clicking right
through. Before you know it Saul is being shipped away home to Tarsus.

The church has another moment of
peace, Peter heals and returns Tabitha/Dorcas to life from the dead. The most interesting think I find is the last
verse, Acts 9:34 “And he (Peter) stayed a long time in Joppa with Simon, a
tanner.”

It seems to me Peter has not yet had
his vision on Cornelius’s roof, and even after he does he has another episode
where he gets hung up again about Jewish rules. But in verse 34 we have him
staying a long time at the home of a tanner. Somewhere along the way I thought
I had learned Jews are not supposed to touch dead flesh in order to remain
ceremonially clean. It seems odd Peter would choose the home of a tanner.

Monday, April 24, 2017

Evangelii Nuntiandi paragraphs 8-16 reiterate
themes for which I was hoping when I first read it over 10 years ago, the
themes of internal renewal, radical conversion, profound change, evangelization
is the essential mission of the Church and is the work of everyone in the Church.

“For the Christian
community is never closed in upon itself…only acquires its full meaning when it
becomes a witness, when it evokes admiration and conversion, and when it
becomes the preaching and proclamation of the Good News. Thus it is the whole Church
that receives the mission to evangelize, and the work of each individual member
is important for the whole.”

I have found regeneration to be one dynamic which is
almost unique to Christianity. Even some groups who consider themselves
Christian may deemphasize or even ignore it. I searched through the websites of
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and did not find any teachings
on regeneration. The only way Christianity can work is for the Church’s members
to be regenerated to become creatures who are less prone to sin and prone to
turn to God rather than away from Him.

I have lived my life
banking on 2 Corinthians 5:17 Revised Standard Version Second Catholic Edition
(RSVCE) 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the
old has passed away, behold, the new has come. I need to be a new creation. The
old creation I was before I started letting God transform me and started
experiencing continuing conversion was not the kind of creation I wanted to end
up being.

I am reminded of the story of the father who needed to
keep his son occupied for a while. He found a picture of the world in a
magazine and ripped it into little pieces because he figured his son was not
familiar with where in the world the various continents lie. Five minutes later
the son came back with the puzzle put together. The father asked his son how he
put the map together so quickly, and the son replied, “I found a picture of a
man on the other side of the page the map was on. I got the man right and the world
came out right.”

I have always believed we will not be able to solve the
problems of the world until we change the problem of the human heart. If we can
get the man right we can get the world right. As long as the human is not
together, the world will not get together. The only way to get the human right
is by getting him linked up with God, and the only way to get linked up with
God is to get linked up through and with Jesus Christ.

I was taught early on I would need to link up to God
through Jesus Christ as an act of my will. Paragraph 13 also teaches this.
“Those who sincerely accept the Good News, through the power of this acceptance
and of shared faith…make up a community which is in turn evangelizing.”

I won’t name names but I know of a parish wherein the
“Time, Talent, and Treasure” document contains no activity I would consider
primarily to have a focus on evangelization. Yet Evangelii Nuntiandi
teaches evangelization is the essential mission of the Church. “Those who have
received the Good News and who have been gathered by it into the community of
salvation can and must
communicate and spread it.

The
Church “is linked to evangelization in her most intimate being.” “She begins by
evangelizing herself…she has a constant need of being evangelized…to retain
freshness vigor and strength in order to proclaim the Gospel…evangelized by
constant conversion and renewal in order to evangelize the world with
credibility.” How often have we heard people in the church have been
sacramentalized without first being evangelized? We have seen the sorry
results. Confirmation of young people who have no intention of ever coming to
Mass is one result I’ve seen most often.

I read Evangelii Nuntiandi
for the first time back in 2002. I was working at a small parish in a small
town as a religious education coordinator for grades 5 through Confirmation. At
our parish in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, Minnesota we hauled
our 16 year old Confirmandi, their parents and sponsors to the Cathedral in a
couple charter buses. Of course most of these teenagers treat Confirmation as
graduation and we don’t see much of them at church after that.

I and my wife had gone through RCIA
and entered the Church in 1992 after spending 13 married years together
attending non-Catholic evangelical churches. We had learned how to evangelize
by attending “Share Your Faith” seminars and “Evangelism Explosion” training.
When we became Catholic we knew Catholics were supposed to evangelize but we
were disappointed to discover how few were interested in evangelization. I was
encouraged when I read Evangelii Nuntiandi and found Pope Paul VI and
all the Popes since were more eager than I was to get Catholics evangelizing.

Way back in the 1970s Pope Paul VI,
in his Address for the closing of the Third General Assembly of the Synod of
Bishops, used the phrase “NEW period of EVANGELIZATION.” The New Evangelization
has been around for a while.

While I find this focus on evangelization
encouraging, I also am a bit frustrated. As I have written elsewhere (Eleven Reasons
Catholics Do Not Evangelize) I am frustrated because there seems to be no sense
of urgency among most of the laity. In
the work-a-day world during a performance appraisal we hear, "You do not
exhibit a sense of urgency." This comment is usually referring to some
earth shattering, life or death thing like making sure there's enough toilet
paper in the restrooms. We think, "Why should I be urgent about something
that isn't life or death or involving somebody's eternal destiny?" So, to
please the supervisor, we race around all day acting like emptying the pencil
sharpener will forestall World War III. Leading lost people to Jesus does involve
somebody's eternal destiny but when it comes to evangelization the average people
in the Church move at glacial speed (using Sherry Weddell’s phrase).

When I was involved with Campus Crusade
for Christ in college (now called CRU) the call to action was to reach the
world for Christ in our generation. There was a great sense of urgency.

At least all the Popes since I
graduated from high school back in 1975 and probably Popes prior have stressed
evangelization but most average Catholics seem to be afraid of the word and
even sometimes believe “We Catholics don’t do that.”

Throughout these paragraphs I find
the word “proclaim”. I’ve heard Catholics often like to repeat a quote they
think came from St. Francis (he never really said it) “Preach the Gospel at all
times, use words if necessary.” They think this gets them off the hook and they
don’t really ever need to say anything about Jesus to anyone who might need to
learn about Him. These Catholics figure if they live a good life people will be
drawn to Jesus, but how will those people know anything about Jesus if these
Catholics don’t explain Him to them? Jesus needs to be proclaimed. There is
power in the message, but the message needs to be proclaimed.

Pope Paul VI wrote Jesus is the
greatest evangelizer. We are to imitate Jesus. Jesus proclaims a Kingdom. So
must we. As Evangelii Nuntiandi says we have the power of Pentecost but
we still may need to answer the first of the three burning questions, “In our
day, what has happened to that hidden energy of the Good News, which is able to
have a powerful effect on man’s conscience?”

Thursday, April 13, 2017

Immediately after giving the example
of Joseph Barnabas Luke gives the example of Ananias and Sapphira and things
get dramatic. There were a couple run-ins with the authorities prior but in
neither case was there as much drama as this, a man and wife dropping
dead.

Solomon’s portico shows up in both
chapter 4 and chapter 5 as the place where the people “hung out” with the
Apostles, where their signs and wonders were discussed and probably even some
signs and wonders were performed. Portico (from Italian) was popular in Greek
architecture, a porch actually. This one was on the eastern side of the outer
court of the temple (women’s court). As it happens, a prominent Protestant
leader in the emergent
church movement, Doug Pagitt,
is pastor of a well-known church in Minneapolis called Solomon’s Porch.

While
on the subject of names of things based on subjects showing up in the Acts of
the Apostles, I find it interesting we haven’t found many healing, health or
medical related things named “Peter’s Shadow.” Maybe because most people wouldn’t
associate “Peter’s shadow” with St. Peter the Apostle but with Peter Pan, who
couldn’t hang onto his shadow.

Twice now so far in the Acts of the
Apostles we see the various antagonists of the Apostles and the growing church
(captain of the temple guards, priests) teamed up with the Sadducees. Where were the Pharisees? It was easy to
miss. I had to read through again to catch it. “Then the high priest rose up
and all his companions, that is, the party of the Sadducees…” (It’s because
they’re so “sad, you see?”) The Sadducees were calling the shots because the high
priest had the Sadducees as his “companions”.

So
the high priest and his Sadducee companions threw the Apostles in jail. Luke
specified “public jail”. I thought there might be something significant, like
there was a temple jail or some other kind of jail. I did some searching and
discovered it’s a function of the translation. The Revised Standard Version
Catholic Edition consistently uses “prison” and uses “jail” only as the root of
the word “jailer”. The New American
Bible Revised Edition uses “jail” and “prison” interchangeably, so the “public
jail” is probably not significant.

The
next morning, while the Apostles were already preaching in the temple the high
priest and his ever loyal companions (ELC) arrived, convened the Sanhedrin and
sent court officers to fetch the Apostles from jail. I guess we are supposed to assume the high
priest and the ELC arrived at the temple and didn’t notice the Apostles
preaching. The court officers didn’t find anybody in the jail. A paraphrase of part of verse 24 of chapter 5
might be “the captain of the temple guard and the chief priests were clueless…”

After
the clueless captain and court officers fetched the Apostles from the temple
area there was finally a mention of a Pharisee, Gamaliel. So we find the
Pharisees were not completely out of the picture.

When the neglect of the Greek widows
was brought to the attention of the Apostles Stephen and six others were
appointed to deal with the distribution of food. The 12 Apostles were free to spend their time in the business of prayer and ministry of the word. I find it interesting Luke wrote after
the Apostles laid their hands on the seven chosen “even a large group of
priests were becoming obedient to the faith.” I cynically imagine the priests
saw seven were delegated to do the “dirty work”, so they turned to one another
and said “Wow, no manual labor! No serving at tables! We got to get a part of
this gig!”

Stephen demonstrated evangelization
isn’t just for Apostles and it cost him his life.

Another thing I noticed is Stephen
pointed out Abraham was told by God to “Go forth from your land and from your
kinsfolk to the land that I will show you.” So what didn’t Abraham do? He
didn’t leave his kinsfolk. He took his father and his nephew, Lot, and went
where? To Harran, not to the land God would show him. Abraham then stalled until
his father died. Luke wrote into the words of Stephen that God “made him
migrate.” Talk about a reluctant emigrant!